This invention relates to a system for determining the contour of a plane form or a two-dimensional pattern.
In determining the contour of a plane form in the prior art, the photo-electric converting plane of an industrial television camera (hereinafter abbreviated to "ITV camera") which is exposed to the plane form, is divided into thousands of minute sections, and a logical operation of spacial differentiation is performed relative to each section to determine the contour of the plane form. Therefore, the accuracy rate depends on the number of sections into which the plane form is divided. Stated otherwise, precision data cannot be obtained without increasing the number of sections, hence requiring a large storage capacity in an associated buffer memory and large data-processing capability in an associated electronic computer. Thus, the system for determining the contour of a plane form has been inevitably large in size, of complex structure and difficult to handle.
It has been proposed that the contour of a plane form be determined with reference to the reciprocity between two different images of the same plane form appearing on two ITV cameras. Also, it has been proposed that a plane form be exposed to laser, and be triangulated.
However, these proposed methods require determination of individual points on the contour of the plane form, and therefore these methods inherently require very tedious work in obtaining precision data.
The object of this invention is to provide a system which can determine the contour of a plane form from a reduced number of sampling points with full accuracy and which therefore does not require a large processing capability in an associated electronic computer.